El mito de una riqueza proverbial

In the time of the bourbon reformism of middle 18th century and the debate about the importance of the capitals and technologies of late 19th century, many writers and politicians discussed about the economic opportunities in Mexico and the optimal way of take advance of them. Present in this discussion was the idea of a prodigal nature, a notion originated in previous times but translated to the economic argument of the illustrated period. Even when this subject had been referred in general terms by historians and economists, had been poorly studied according to the sequence of arguments and his place in the history of economic thought. In this way, this volume offers three studies about the ideas, from the late colonial “proyectismo” till the end of the reflections of Guillermo Prieto and Justo Sierra. A final commentary takes the development to expose a general interpretation of the same, and link it to the context of Mexico.  Although the authors don’t try to explode an open subject, they try to clarify moments, causes and central aspects of the whole discussion.